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Yoga Practices of the East and West Alleviate Stress and PTSD Symptoms A former U.S. Air Force pilot was scheduled to be on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, but her connecting flight was cancelled, and she was not on the plane fated to be hijacked by terrorists. After the plane crashed, she experienced survivor guilt and felt disconnected from everyone and everything that had been important in her life. She spent the next eight years trying to recover a sense of meaning. Finally, she participated in a two-day breathing workshop where she had a transformative experience in which she felt reconnected to everyone, with restoration of meaning. How could breathing practices resolve PTSD symptoms eight years after the traumatic event? Patricia Gerbarg, M.D., an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College, described this story during the full-day experiential course on mind-body techniques, breath work, movement, and meditation at APA’s 2012 annual meeting in Philadelphia. Richard Brown, M.D., an associate clinical professor in psychiatry at Columbia University, taught attendees coherent breathing, resistance breathing, Ha breath, Qigong movements, and open-focus meditation. Brown and Gerbarg described a neurophysiological model showing how changing one's breathing patterns activates the vagus nerves, increasing parasympathetic tone as measured by heart rate variability, restoring sympatho-vagal balance and enhancing stress resilience. Interoceptive pathways carry information about the internal state of the body through the vagus nerves to all major anatomic structures involved in emotion regulation: amygdala, thalamus, prefrontal cortex, insular cortex, and hypothalamus. Afferent information from the respiratory system has rapid, powerful effects on emotion regulatory systems, quieting the overactivity of the amygdala seen in PTSD and enabling the medial prefrontal cortex and insular cortex to modulate the amygdala. Numerous contributory mechanisms were described. Studies were presented demonstrating that breathing practices effectively relieve symptoms in anxiety disorders, PTSD, depression, and caregiver stress. A short nonreligious program successfully alleviated stress and PTSD symptoms in individuals following disasters, including the 2004 Southeast Asia tsunami, earthquake in Haiti, Gulf oil spill, genocide in Rwanda, and among recently liberated slaves in South Sudan. No significant side effects have occurred with this gentle program. Brown and Gerbarg eliminated rapid, forceful breathing from their programs because such practices can trigger flashbacks, panic attacks, or mania in bipolar patients. |
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